Akaroa Roman Catholic and Dissenters Cemetery

Old cemeteries can be found in almost every older city and town in New Zealand. They are often found in rural areas where no town now appears to exist. There is most likely a cemetery somewhere near where you live and go to school. Have you ever visited your local cemetery? Above: To get to the Drybread Cemetery near Omakau in the Maniototo you need to drive across farm paddocks.

Old cemeteries vary greatly in size. Some are very large. Others may contain only a few graves. Some may even be lone graves. They are all cemeteries. Below: Cape Saunders lighthouse children’s cemetery. There are two graves here. Above: Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery is a large, city cemetery with many thousands of burials.

Old cemeteries can be found in many different kinds of places. Some, especially those near the coast, are often located on a hill and have a beautiful view. Plots that overlooked water were valued. Waitati Cemetery overlooks the estuary at Blueskin Bay - Dunedin Anderson’s Bay Cemetery overlooks the the Pacific Ocean

Others can be found on a small areas of land sometimes right in the middle of a large city. Some cemeteries, especially those belonging to the Church of England, can be found in the churchyard. Above: St John’s Anglican Cemetery Waikouaiti – East Otago Above: Cemetery, Woolston, Christchurch.

Some cemeteries have been created for a special purpose. Most cemeteries were established to provide a means of disposing of the dead for the people of a town or city. Above: The Quarantine Island Cemetery was established for passengers who died while in quarantine from a ship arriving in port carrying a contagious disease. The Otago Station operated from 1863 – Below: The Tararua Acre Cemetery was established to bury those bodies washed ashore after the wreck of the S.S.Tararua in 1881.

There were many different kinds of special purpose areas set aside in the general cemeteries. Above: Non Christian communities also needed to bury their dead and often special areas of a cemetery were set aside for cultural groups such as Chinese and Jewish communities. Below: The soldiers cemeteries are special areas set aside for those men who returned from New Zealand’s war service. These are the returned servicemen’s areas.

Cemeteries were carefully crafted landscapes reflecting what people thought was appropriate, beautiful and even educational. So today we have amazing statues and headstones combined with inscriptions and plants that can tell us so much about those who have lived before us…if we look carefully. Prior to 1920, that is in Victorian and Edwardian times, cemeteries were much more than places for burying the dead. List some of the things you think you might see when you walk into a heritage cemetery today … Waipori Cemetery, Tuapeka. The once thriving gold town of Waipori no longer exists.

Headstones Statues Fenced plots Fences Inscriptions Stone corner posts Trees Flowers

Cemeteries are laid out with roads, paths, and divided into blocks and plots, in a similar way to a city. You can see the roads, grass paths, blocks and the individual plots in this satellite view of Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. Map of Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery obtained from

Just like a new city or town you will need a map to find places. Some cemeteries provide maps online but you may have to go to your council or library if these are not available online. This is a map of the Northern Cemetery. You can see the roads (grey) pathways (white) and blocks (yellow) marked. The blocks are numbered to make them easier to find. Northern Cemetery Dunedin. Dunedin City Council: Location of Dunedin’s cemeteries

This is a detailed plot map showing individual numbered plots in a portion of Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. The numbers N-119 are the block numbers. (Map sourced from Northern Cemetery plot maps series. Southern Heritage Trust, Dunedin.)

Cemeteries were also often laid out according to religious affiliations with separate sections for separate religious groups. In some places different religious groups even had different cemeteries. Below: This is the Dissenters and Public Cemetery at Akaroa. It is separated from the Roman Catholic Cemetery which is illustrated on the front page of this slide show. The Anglican Cemetery is a completely different cemetery and is located some distance away. In Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery there is a separate Anglican section, separate Roman Catholic section, and separate General Section which in Dunedin was mainly Presbyterian. There are also a separate Chinese and Jewish sections. In later cemeteries these distinctions are much less noticeable.

For many people cemeteries were much more than places where the dead were buried. They were places where people could keep in touch with, talk to or continue to look after those who they had cared for in life. They became places where people could erect monuments that told of religious piety, achievements, status in the community, good works and affiliations. Family graves provide information about the individuals, their families, lifespan, sometimes even their occupations, achievements in life and circumstances of death. These memorials are social documents. They are primary historical sources which reveal much about the events and living conditions in the past, but also giving us clues about taste, fashion and communal values.